Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh Opens Six-Day Zambia Visit in Lusaka
Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh arrived in Zambia on Monday for a six-day official visit to strengthen ties between the United Kingdom and Zambia.
The trip runs through Friday, Sept. 19. It will take her from the capital, Lusaka, to the Lower Zambezi and Livingstone in the south.
She departed London on the evening of Sept. 13. The Court Circular, the palace's daily record of official engagements, recorded the departure from Heathrow Airport in an entry issued from St James's Palace The Royal Family.
Her first full day started in Lusaka with eye health. The duchess attended a reception hosted by the International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness and the eye-care charity Orbis Town & Country.
She wore a bright green midi dress with a purple sash. She finished the look with gold jewelry and canvas espadrilles from Penelope Chilvers, a British shoe brand.
The cause is a longstanding one for her. The duchess serves as global ambassador for the blindness-prevention agency. She has seen Orbis's surgical and training work in Ethiopia, Bangladesh and India.
The Lusaka reception looked ahead to November. That is when Antigua will host the first Global Summit for Eye Health, a meeting with a goal of ending avoidable sight loss by 2030.
Eye health connects to her other work on women and girls. The duchess has spoken about how poor vision limits school and work, especially for women and girls who carry most caregiving.
The rest of the week widens out. The schedule includes programs on gender equality, education, women in the workplace, and climate and nature conservation.
In Lusaka she is due to meet Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema. Later she will travel to Mosi-oa-Tunya, known to many Americans as Victoria Falls, where she will lay a flower at the World War I memorial.
She will also visit a village health clinic. The clinic is running a pilot program against trachoma, a bacterial eye infection that can cause blindness if left untreated.
This is a return trip. The duchess last visited Zambia in November 2014, when she still held the title Countess of Wessex. She represented Queen Elizabeth II at the state funeral of Zambian President Michael Chilufya Sata.
What makes this stand out is the mix. There is ceremony, a presidential meeting and a memorial tribute. And there is clinic work on preventable blindness.
For Americans catching up, that combination is the job. Senior members of the British royal family travel abroad as working representatives. Their stops are logged day by day in the palace record.
